Graeme Howorth

“On days when I felt tired and not tempted to exercise, ithlete told me otherwise and not only did I exercise but glad I did.”

Until I took up running again four years ago, I didn’t really partake in any regular sports or exercise. Walking and occasional windsurfing were my only physical exercise. In my school days I was fit, running in county cross-country, playing rugby, and quite good on the track up to 1600 meters.

My fitness targets this year are one halfmarathon (sub 1:45), two 10K races (sub 48). With running and mountain biking as my primary sports, I tend to cycle when my joints are giving me problems or when ithlete says “mild” exercise.” I train by miles, running around 35 miles and cycling about 30 miles each week. I guess it averages between 7 – 10 hours per week. I partially tore my medial collateral ligament on my left knee about 18 months ago, and it took the best part of eight months to fully heal. I used to run regardless how I felt and this led to periods of quite profound tiredness, needing sleep after longer runs — which was unusual. I would have to stop all exercise for one to two weeks to get out of the cycle.

Because of fatigue, I wanted a way to find out what my body was telling me – stop? go? rest? That’s why I began using ithlete. The biggest difference is that I now seem to get back into my running fitness quicker. I feel less tired after longer runs and have fewer injuries (current knee problem excluded.)

I can normally guess correctly what ithlete is going to say; for example, a hard training session usually results in the HRV going down. If it says red (rest) I obey; if it gives me an orange (caution) I go with light runs or cycling (this seems to work); and I usually get a blue (go) the next day.

Before using ithlete, if I felt tired I would often not run. I now realize that “feeling tired” and HRV don’t always go hand-in-hand. Surprisingly, some of my better runs have been when I felt physically tired. Instead I would go out and soon felt fine – simply by following what ithlete told me. In other words, when there were days when I felt tired and not tempted to exercise, ithlete told me otherwise and not only did I exercise but glad I did.